Indice dei contenuti per Fall 2020 in Sailing World

The DragonFlite 95 remote-control high-performance sailboat arrived in a big, long box at my home just as the COVID-19 pandemic upended our lives with stay-at-home orders. Here in Rhode Island, early March is nothing special in terms of outdoor activities, so once spring sailing got canceled, I adapted, teaching myself to splice and staying fit on my bike. Another thing on my quarantine to-do list was to build the DragonFlite, which sat for weeks next to my bedroom-turned-office desk before being moved to the closet, out of sight, for another day. And then summer came. Real sailing returned. Day by day, my evenings got busier: Laser racing on Monday nights, family sails on Tuesday nights, and eventually, by late June, J/24 racing with the homies. All of this was good…

It’s a December night in 2015, and Matt Scharl is restless in the “guest room” set up for him in an office inside Gougeon Brothers boat shop on the bank of the Saginaw River in Bay City, Michigan. Out on the shop floor is the unmistakable white trimaran Adagio, designed and built in 1969 by the Gougeon brothers, Meade and Jan. Earlier in the day, Scharl stood alongside Meade and Gougeon Brothers’ president and CEO, Alan Gurski, assessing Adagio’s winter worklist. Meade’s primary concern was a 3-foot section of track that kept separating from the mast. Now, late at night and alone, Scharl can’t resist “popping a few screws,” and before long, he’s extracted the entire track. When he finally stops, the track is on the shop floor among chunks…

There was a time when Pete Goss was the most famous of living British sailors. It came after his extraordinary rescue of Raphaël Dinelli in the 1996-97 Vendée Globe. It had won him global fame and an opportunity to write his own ticket. What Goss chose to do with that opportunity was breathtaking in its scale, innovation and technical ambition. Goss built Team Philips—the 120-foot, norm-busting maxi catamaran—and entered a no-rules circumnavigation of the planet known as the Race. It ended badly, with the boat sinking in a vicious Atlantic storm. It took with it all the infrastructure and businesses that Goss had built around it. It’s been almost two decades since the loss of Team Philips, and these days Pete Goss is taking things a little easier. “I do…

THE normal buildup to a Vendée Globe singlehanded round-the-world race is dominated by two solo trans-Atlantic races—the old Transat (this year, Brest to New York) and then the New York-Vendée-Les Sables d’Olonne return leg. But with both races canceled due to COVID-19 and the Vendée Globe itself in doubt, the class had a crisis on its hands to try to salvage the season and get the round-the-world race back on track for its start in November. Like everyone else, the IMOCA fleet was caught out by the lockdown—most boats had unproven modifications carried out in the winter that needed validation on the water, and at least five skippers still had to complete a 2,000-mile offshore passage to qualify for the round-the-world race. With sailing to American shores out of the question,…

For the sailors, designers, shore team and all others behind the scenes of the Luna Rossa Prada Pirelli Team, the mission is defined: to challenge for and win the 36th America’s Cup. As Challenger of Record, the team has trained nearly isolated in Italy, enduring boat and mast breakages, lockdowns and unexpected setbacks, but resiliency, sacrifice and determination have fueled the continued development of its AC75. Whether the Italian syndicate has a winning package will be known only when it lines up against its rival challengers in Auckland. Only then will the proof be black and white. Sailing team member Shannon Falcone, on his sixth Cup campaign, shares his insight into team photographer Carlo Borlenghi’s captivating images from Cagliari. The splashdown of the AC75’s foil is a hint of how…

It’s 8 a.m. Monday at the loft, and a weekly ritual is taking place. Most of us are just back from weekend regattas. It’s time to Monday-morning quarterback our performances and, more important, those of our sails. We talk about how the new Melges 24 jib we’ve given to the current North American champion did in a local event, how the new Star main sent to Italy did in the Star Europeans. There will be emails and reports about how we can make the sails even better. My turn. I’d gotten into bed about six hours earlier, having towed the loft-owned J/24 from San Francisco to San Diego, behind a retired plumber’s van. We’d sailed a long City Front day in 20-plus knots of wind against tide, so it’s a…

THE DIP-POLE JIBE is a technique long lost upon the newest generation of bowmen, living easy peasy while commanding their glory at the pointy end. They’ve got it pretty good with their retractable sprits and fancy string takedown systems these days, but the curmudgeon in me says there’s nothing particularly graceful or wildly athletic about spastically overhauling a spinnaker sheet during an asymmetric jibe. Indeed, the dip pole is a far greater thing of beauty—from the trip to the plummeting sweep of the pole as it arcs swiftly into the bowman’s grasp for a transfer so deft, the big color bubble simply floats past the forestay like a parade balloon. Such dedication to the art, however, comes with the sacrifice of wet knickers and sea boots sloshing with shrimp, a…

As the bow soars past a mark on Italy’s Lake Garda, 22-year-old Odile van Aanholt isn’t admiring the view of the cliffs behind her or the shoreline ahead, packed with European sunbathers. Her eyes are scanning critical points around the 22-foot foiler as the apparent wind swings forward: the flapping luff of the loaded spinnaker, her mainsail trimmer fighting to balance the boat on the skinny, V-shaped foil skimming below the surface to leeward and the explosion of activity as Van Aanholt and her three teammates, the 20-somethings of Kingdom Team Netherlands, make rapid adjustments before everything goes quiet and the boat accelerates downwind. She takes it all in, pinching herself at the awesomeness of the experience. But there’s a maneuver coming up and only 20 seconds to get set…

It’s a hot late afternoon at the Houston YC, and the sea breeze that kicked in earlier in the afternoon is winding down. At the boat ramp, two Finns have just been hosed off and are being put away for the day when a nondescript, silver Toyota Tundra pickup truck pulls in and stops a short distance away. One sailor, still in his kit from the afternoon training session, walks to the pickup truck and holds his cellphone to the truck window. The driver does the same on the opposite side. It’s not a high-tech drug deal, but rather an airdrop that exchanges a file over a Bluetooth connection. The driver, Luther Carpenter, is the US Olympic Finn coach, and the sailor is Luke Muller, who has just been named…

From where Dan Morris usually stands on board American Magic’s 75-foot foiling America’s Cup yacht, the view is pretty spectacular. It’s a perspective only a handful of humans will ever experience. It’s wet and windy, and it’s Zen-like when the boat soars at 40 knots. As the portside headsail trimmer, Morris has the luxury of full visibility of his towering sail. He can see up the leech and across the acreage of black cloth, its dozens of yarns flickering and painting a picture of the wind as it streams across both sides of the sail and exits with full force in his face. He can observe the leeward side of the twin-skinned mainsail as well, plus the big grinder in front of him, relentlessly pumping hydraulic oil so he can…

When we slowed to 22 knots, it felt like sailing in molasses. I had just driven one of the most celebrated boats in the world, L’Hydroptere, at 34 knots. Later, I’d look at 44 and try to imagine what it was like in 2009 to achieve a record-setting 500-meter run of 52.86. That one, and a nautical-mile record of 50.17 knots, were both set in France. I sailed aboard in California leading up to 2015, when this icon of French speed sailing set off on the classic Transpac course, Los Angeles to Honolulu, only to prove that the route held too many downwind miles for such a specialized machine. Unlike the even more specialized Vestas Sailrocket that eventually took its records away, L’Hydroptere could get around a racing triangle, but…

The dialogue on board Courageous during the most recent 12-Metre World Championship is terse as we maneuver around eight swift but heavy yachts at the leeward gate. My role as tactician is to guide our helmsman, Art Santry, safely through the traffic. With the cacophony of the headsail being hoisted and the spinnaker being gathered on the foredeck, Santry is quiet and hyper-focused. Somehow we round the mark with speed and pass two boats. Best of all, we’re headed toward a favorable wind shift. He doesn’t break a sweat, nor does he display any emotion. He simply concentrates, an amateur helmsman steering a fine groove like a pro. Santry’s ability to concentrate in such a high-pressure situation comes from a lifetime of racing on a wide variety of dinghies and…

There’s a buzz in the air on Kaneohe Bay. It’s not the buzz you might hear after a Transpac finish, or the buzz you will inevitably succumb to if you wander into the Waikiki YC bar on Friday night after beer can races. Nope, this buzz is coming from the waters off Oahu’s windward shore: a mob of Waszps buzzing the coach boat. Oahu’s local Waszp fleet has grown to nearly a dozen over the past two years, with Kaneohe YC recently purchasing its second charter boat with the help of private donors and local hero Mark Towill, who hosts annual lectures to help fundraise for the Kaneohe Sailing Foundation. “I was a benefactor of the foundation when I was coming up,” Towill says, “so it’s great to be able…

Much attention of late has been turned to shorthanded offshore racing, partly because of its new status as an Olympic discipline for 2024, and partly because of the reduced COVID-19 exposure with a smaller team. You could say now is a great time to consider shorthanded sailing, even at a more recreational level. If you’re aspiring to be an offshore sailor and you have access to a seaworthy boat between 20 and 40 feet, you can get started immediately. Maybe you have to sail singlehanded for now, until you find a suitable partner in crime, but don’t let this be a barrier to start: Singlehanded training is an excellent exercise. It will serve you well when you get together with a partner and teammate, hopefully in the near future. So…

What if you got to the top of the mountain, and it wasn’t there? John Bertrand lived that nightmare 40 years ago, when the United States boycotted the Olympic Games. A 25-year-old world champion in Lasers and Finns, Bertrand was as close as a sailor can ever be to a sure bet for an Olympic medal—but. All these years later, Bertrand has helped coach Stephanie Roble and Maggie Shea to a place on the 2020 Olympic team. They were supposed to represent in the 49erFX this past summer in Tokyo—but. The stories are the same—but. They’re not the same. Bertrand’s 1980 chances went from bright to lights out. Roble and Shea are still training for what they hope will be the Games of 2021, and they’re hanging on to the…

Tactics and boatspeed go hand in hand, and that’s why you look smart when you’re fast. But before we can display our speed and tactical prowess, we have to first develop a bigpicture strategy. Weighing all three elements in the heat of a race can be overwhelming, but simplifying the decision-making process helps us focus on what matters most in the moment. The winning formula is to make unemotional, repeatable, high-percentage decisions that, in tandem with solid boatspeed, get us the consistent results we seek. Let’s start with strategy. This is your big-picture game plan, which you will lay out before the race starts. Once the race is underway, this strategy is constantly assessed and updated to adjust to conditions and the tactical options available to you. Here’s a hypothetical…

Downwind finishes used to mean squaring back the pole, sailing as perpendicular to the line as possible, keeping your air clear and crossing at the favored end. For boats with symmetric spinnakers, that’s still the norm. But if you sail a boat with an asymmetric spinnaker, the game has changed. True, you’re still looking for the favored end and working to keep your air clear, but you’re now sailing higher angles more parallel to the finish line, and jibing is expensive. There are also more interactions with other boats as people approach from different angles, so choosing a clear lane and getting the layline correct is more critical. On the macro level, treat a downwind finish line like a gate—come in from an edge, with a clear lane, and finish…